MOD: The Ancient Mediterranean MOD 0.2.2

[Arrian]

Thamis,

Carthage & the Kolchis have the best land? It must be awesome, considering how good Gaul & Iberia are looking (and Italia is beautiful too). Personally, I love what I see in central & southern Gaul.

No worries, because I'll utilize the land I have far, far better than the AI will. The AI is still using the super-wide Conquests city spacing, which is bad enough in stock conditions, but is very bad in TAM, with the city size caps lowered to 4 and 8 from 6 and 12. I will utilize most of the tiles inside my borders, whereas the AI will waste a large portion of them.

I dunno if the Babs are in the game, but I know the Assyrians are, since they've built their civ-specific wonders. Persia's in as well. As are the Hittites (they built their ironworks wonder) and Egypt.

I can't wait 'till I can do some map trades. My exploration, while not terrible, has yet to uncover a large portion of the map.

Watorrey,

Okay. It's not exactly a show-stopper bug anyway.

-Arrian

[Arrian]

Is there a screenshot of the minimap w/starting locations floating around somewhere? I thought I saw one once...

-Arrian

[watorrey]

page 6 of 8 on my display setting of this thread. Don't see a way to identify post #

[Arrian]

Ah-hah! There it is. Thanks.

The only one I cannot read is the Pink one due north of Macedon. Whoever that is isn't in my game.

The map reminded me that Media *is* in my game.

That leaves:

Goths (I think, maybe I met them...)
Babylon
Picts
Britons
Berber
Nubia
Saba
Massagetae
Lydia
Phoenicia
Israel

IIRC, at startup there were four "NONE" slots. Counting Iberia and the civ whose name I can't make out (is it the Dacians?), that means 2 from the list above are also missing.

Hrm, I guess I should have played with the start settings so I got a full set of civs.

-Arrian

[Arrian]

Oh, and what about the Sea Peoples? Now that I think about it, I recall them building Sail Mastery in my game. No idea where they are, though.

I'm starting to think I should have paid more attention to the startup settings...

-Arrian

[watorrey]

Just like in the good old Ancient Mediterranean... they had heard of them but weren't quite sure where they were

[Arrian]

Hrm, they could have been put on Ireland. Or on an island that isn't shown on the posted minimap. Heh, cool. Mystery

I hope I'm remembering the startup screen correctly, and there are only 4 civs missing.

-Arrian

[Arrian]

Found 'em. N. African coast, between Egypt & Carthage.

Are they set up to be there in every game, or do they spawn in random locations?

-Arrian

[Justus II]

Sea People's normal start location is Cyrenica (Modern-Day Libya), right where you found them. Going back to the Embassy 'bug', I've had that happen as well when investigating cities, and I don't think it's a bug, it's a feature!

Unlike regular C3C, where all governments grant at least regular diplomats (and spies), some governments in TAM have "slave" (conscript) diplomats and spies, and I'd assume that means they have a less-than-standard chance of success at all espionage missions. So that means even the ones that are normally 100% (Embassy, Investigate) now have a chance to fail.

[Arrian]

Ah. I see. I'm still using Thing Law, which I guess has crappy diplomats.

It's amusing to be the #1 civ with 4% of the land area and 11% of the population. The nearest AI is at 2% land & IIRC 5 or 6% pop. Half of me. And yet I'm still tiny.

I think my goal is going to be to re-create Roman empire's historical borders at their peak (or thereabouts) by the time the Romans really did it (~100AD).

So, between now (~900BC) and then, I must:

1) Finish colonizing Gaul. This is proceeding rapidly. I should own it all quite soon.

2) Finish colonizing Iberia. This is really getting going now, and has been temporarily slowed by barb uprisings. Plus, the Sea Peoples, Berbers and Carthage each have a city on the southern tip of Iberia. I probably can't grab it all w/o a fight.

3) Colonize southern Britain.

4) Take parts (or all) of the Berbers, the remnants of Gallia, and maybe the Germanic Tribes.

5) Conquer the Etruscans (repoped where Dacia should be), Macedon, Mycenae, Troy, whoever has the rest of Asia Minor, Phoenicia/Israel, Egypt, Carthage, the Minoans (including Sicily, which they colonized).



Much to do.

-Arrian

[Arrian]

One wonders how the Romans thought they could effectively defend the empire they created. Seriously!

I'm at somewhere between 300 and 400 BC, IIRC. I'm now running City States as a government. I've got:

*Italy, and 1/2 of Sicily (culture flip, yay!)
*Gaul
*1/3 - 1/2 of Iberia (northern half, basically). It will be 1/2 by the time I'm through with some chop & builds (cities in spots that require chopping).
*Dacia, and some areas north of there the Romans never held (I had to hunt down the Etruscans, you see).
*1 city in Greece, due to culture flip.

I am now invading Macedon. Once that is done, I'll polish off Mycenae.

...

Back to the question. It's really hard to properly defend all that territory (at least before Imperial Roads ). The Romans faced this IRL, against opponents smarter than the CivIII AI. And they had a MUCH larger land border than I have to deal with (yet), since I haven't ventured into Asia or Africa yet.

My armed forces are at this point rather small compared to the size of my empire (IIRC, it costs me 12gpt in upkeep right now). It includes 4 3x broadsword armies, a fair number of phalanxes, some Republican Legionaries (with which I triggered my GA), a couple of velites and a grand total of 2 auxillary cavs.

In quick succession, the Kolchis, Huns and Goths picked fights with me. Each took a city briefly, before their forces were annihilated (of those 3 cities, 2 were taken by "settler teams" that were tramping all over my land). I then managed to make peace with them. The Kolchis gave me a scare with their War Chariots (they actually managed to concentrate about 10 of them in one spot and do bad things to me for a turn or two). Just before I saved & quit last night, I noted a possible incoming Lydian attack. Bastards, all of 'em!

The thing about TAM is that I cannot consider anywhere really "safe" except cities in the interior. In stock CivIII, coastal cities were "safe" until Marines (so long as you had a mobil reserve available to mop up AI landings). Not so in TAM. At present, the only coastal cities with proper defense are in southern Italy. Coastal ities north of Mt. Vesuvious are empty. And just recently, certain civs have discovered seafaring (me too, thanks to the GL) and I've seen triremes around.

As such, my current armed forces are not up to the job. I need a lot more troops, at that's gonna get expensive, fast (Empire, here I come!).

For that reason, IMO, City-States isn't as unbalanced on the large Med map as it is on the Mesopotamia map - at least until Imperial Roads. The larger map presents many more threats, and as such requires (IMO) a larger armed forces relative to empire size. CS was still the best government choice, at least for now, but especially if unit support was 0/1/1 instead of 0/2/2, it wouldn't necessarily have been the clear winner. In fact, the initial switch from Thing Law to CS hurt a bit b/c I had a lot more 1-4 size towns than I had 5+ cities, and thus had nearly no unit support at first under CS. Once I got to Architecture, however, that changed.

...

As an aside, I have now identified all civs, and contacted all but one of them (Massagetae). Those that were left out:

Iberia
Dacia
Britons
Phoenicia

In retrospect, it might have been better for me if Iberia had been in. Then I'd have Leonardo's in addition to Sun Tzus & the Pyramids!

-Arrian

[Justus II]

I'm glad that further play has given us all a better perspective on the governments. As I mentioned, I was concerned in all my balancing efforts, that it would be skewed by my own play style too much. Also, your comment about the Mesopotamia map is a good one, all my testing was on the large med map.

No doubt City States is a good government, we can just hope, as you said, to make it so there is no "clear winner". That's part of the strategy!

[Arrian]

Indeed. 0/1/1 would have made me wait a tad longer before switching over in this particular game.

I think I have 94 units, 90 of which are free under CS, so I pay 4*3 = 12gpt. If support was 0/1/1, I'd get 45 free and pay for 49*3 = 147gpt. Probably enough to force me down one notch on the research slider (I'm in my GA now, too, so maybe more than one notch otherwise).

Things are gonna get easier for me from here on out, though, because:

1) I have bridgebuilding now, which greatly assists my defense.

2) Many of my cities are finishing up their improvements and can start pumping out more units.

3) I'm fast closing in on Imperial Roads (I'm researching Ballistics, after which I need Siege and then Imperialism itself).

Still, I need a bunch more troops, and I really need more naval units (right now I have 3 galleys, one of which is sailing the Irish Sea).

I'm actually really looking forward to finishing up basic terrain improvement and then using my worker horde to set up a proper frontier, complete with fortresses... all through Germany & Dacia.

I'm no longer certain about trying to literally re-create the Empire, though. I don't really WANT Carthage, or the Berber territory, or the Sea Peoples' territory, or Egypt... I wouldn't mind Troy, Lydia & Israel, though But they'd be a ***** to hold.

Edit: on further review, Israel would be a ***** to hold, Lydia & Troy might not be such a big deal... hmm.

-Arrian

[watorrey]

a quick comment on defending coastal cities in TAM. You only really need 2 - 3 units per coarstal city. The AI seems to use 2 amphibious units at the most, more commonly 1 at a time. That means the 3rd defender can just be a place holder unit until you can get reinforcements there on your next turn.

[Arrian]

I find that 2 units does the job just fine, yeah (especially once one of those units is a phalanx, or something better, like a Praetorian).

The AI never did take a shot at any of my coastal towns, actually. They did make 2 1-unit landings next to Roma, however. Those were easily destroyed.

I've played until 145bc, and have just initiated a revolt to switch to Empire (yet another 7 turn anarchy, blah). There is no real strategic need for the switch - City States is still doing just fine for me (25% corruption, and still making enough money for 4-turn research). I want to try it out & build the Empire-specific wonders. I'm NOT looking forward to the pop hit, though.

I've taken Macedon, Mycenae and Crete, and now have about 2/3 of Iberia. I also have 1 city due south of the Israeli capital, taken from the Sea Peoples (who took it from Lydia).

Civs destroyed: Erutruscans, Sea Peoples, Mycenae, Macedon. The Minoans are down to 1 city, and will not last much longer.

Up next: Gallia (time to clean up the shattered remnants) and then Troy & Lydia. Then probably the Berbers, Carthage & Egypt.

-Arrian

p.s. It appears that Exploration provides the worker speed bonus of Replaceable Parts in the stock game. Was that intended?